"Our fans are pretty good. They don't give away too much. Sometimes people love dropping spoilers, but our fans are good. They tend to do it in such a way that doesn't ruin it for fans who don't want to know."--Phil Keoghan

"Our fans are pretty good. They don't give away too much. Sometimes people love dropping spoilers, but our fans are good. They tend to do it in such a way that doesn't ruin it for fans who don't want to know."--Phil Keoghan

kE/TI are seen walking across the bridge of the gods. I think they are dropped off at the Bridge of the Gods. They zipline across to the Cascade Locks and then the second zipline comes into it somewhere later!

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'We are the makers of music, and the dreamers of dreams' - 'To roam the roads of lands remote, to travel is to live'.

and lo and behold the trees all match! including the small red one in the 2005 photo. It is bigger but my bet is that the clues are scattered around the bigger part the far part from the photo I posted!

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'We are the makers of music, and the dreamers of dreams' - 'To roam the roads of lands remote, to travel is to live'.

Well, I hate to put a kink in everyone's joy, but I do not believe that the Cluebox task is on Thunder Island. If you will look at Kiwi's beautiful pic of Thunder Island, you will notice that Thunder Island is surrounded by lake water.....calm still lake water.

Now if you will look at the following 3 photos, you will see in the background on the left, through the trees, what I believe is white water. This is indicative of rapids. Also the foliage is much less manicured than Thunder Island.

This photo really shows the boulders in the stream creating the rapids. It seems to me that the stream is flowing toward the camera. It is a little hard to tell in N/S photos. They are pretty flat, a but different camera angle in the K/T photo shows the direction of flow. It could possibly be an island in a smaller stream. The water behind Ken seems to maybe be diverting to the right. But it is much smaller stream than either the Colombia River or Lake Bonneville.

So my conclusion is, that it is either a steam flowing downstream either west or north. Mt Hood is just to the south and east of Cascade Locks, so all water flows west and north in this area. Maybe some of the Portland people can lock down just where this might be. I am assuming this is southeast of Portland. If it is southwest of Portland, ie, in the Newberg area, then the directions of the water would be reversed. The water would be flowing either east or north toward Portland.

It could be on private property, but I would guess one of those smaller parks with a stream running through it.

I first thought this was the brainteaser just before the Finish Line, but now I believe it is just a find a clue task. All those clueboxes and just three of them have a clue in it.

There is the Willamette River quite near to Newberg, but I personally do not believe there was time to go to Cascade Locks and anywhere near Newberg.

However, Dr. Rox, I do not find your analysis totally convincing. It was a calm day when the reference picture of the Columbia River and Thunder Island was taken, so the camera would not reveal anything turbulent. If weather conditions were such that it was high winds, which I know to occasionally happen in northern Oregon, then turbulent water conditions would happen. Wind speed varies widely in the Portland area. I have tried to get something to approximate the conditions on the water when the prevailing wind direction was from the southwest. I chose Mt. Scott, which has probably the second highest average winds in the Portland metro area. Here is the wind table from the Weather Underground for May 14, 2008:

However, the last two above are out because Mt. Adams is over an hour away in Washington State, Mt. Saint Helens is also an hour away, Smith Rock is in the middle of Oregon hours away, and Joshua Tree is a national park in California.

"Our fans are pretty good. They don't give away too much. Sometimes people love dropping spoilers, but our fans are good. They tend to do it in such a way that doesn't ruin it for fans who don't want to know."--Phil Keoghan

Do we have times for the Thunder Island zip and the clue boxes yet? They should be somewhere around 2-230 IIRC from observers.

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"Our fans are pretty good. They don't give away too much. Sometimes people love dropping spoilers, but our fans are good. They tend to do it in such a way that doesn't ruin it for fans who don't want to know."--Phil Keoghan

I work in Cascade Locks, and there is a zip line in place right now from the Bridge of the Gods to Thunder Island. I don't know when they put it up, but it sure wasn't there yesterday! I got there in time to see the camera crews packing up and loading equipment into vans, but a fellow teacher saw two couples ride the zip line down to the island. This was between 2:30-3:30 this afternoon. There were helicopters circling the site, three camera crews at and around the bridge, and they apparently paid the owners of the Charburger restaurant to close for the day so they could secure the parking lot which overlooks the river and the zip line. There were six yellow cabs at the parking lot where the access to the island is, along with more camera crews, and the officer that I talked to said they always stage it so that people don't know for sure how many couples are left. Does that sound reasonable?The other teacher talked to one of the cab drivers, who said he picked up two people at the airport from an overseas flight, took them to Newberg where they "ran around and looked for a clue", then drove them to Cascade Locks. For some reason someone asked him if this was Fear Factor, but he said it was more like a scavenger hunt. Apparently he has not actually seen Amazing Race himself, so didn't know anything about the usual process.My speculation is Timberline Lodge for the finish?